Buddy Holly Born: Rock and Roll's Brief Genius
Buddy Holly was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1936 and had less than three years of recorded output before dying in a plane crash on February 3, 1959 — the day Don McLean later called the day the music died. He was twenty-two. In those three years he'd written and recorded Peggy Sue, That'll Be the Day, Rave On, and Everyday, invented the recording technique of overdubbing his own voice, and established the guitar-bass-drums rock band format that became the standard for everything that followed. John Lennon heard him on BBC radio and formed a skiffle band. Paul McCartney named the Beatles partly after the Crickets.
September 7, 1936
90 years ago
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